I don’t think I had quite shaken off the music festival when I headed to the airport on Monday morning – but hey, long socks are practical when travelling from cold climates to hot!

So it was off to Jakarta, via the Business Lounge in Sydney – we were flying Garuda so couldn’t get to the First Class Lounge. Them’s the breaks.

We were staying at the Four Seasons in Jakarta which was a lovely hotel. Here is the view from my hotel room window at three different times of day. The first is when we finally arrived at the hotel on Monday night.

The Four Seasons also had a lovely pool, but I only got a couple fo chances to go for a brief swim – our schedule was rather packed.

Our week was filled with meetings and trips in cars and dinners and trips in cars and visits to training insitutions. We spent a lot of time in cars, so much so that the following set of photos is entitled “Photos Taken From A Moving Vehicle.”

My favourites in here are:

the motorbike as family transportation – we saw quite a lot of that and I must say it freaked me out a little to see a toddler being held up wearing now helmet, wedged in between parents.

customised helmets: there were so many cool cutomised helmets. Initially I was also struck by how many people wore their helmets, and indeed, there is a law requiring helmets. We did see more people without helmets further out from the centre of Jakarta.

the corporate branded mosque: Astra was one of the companies we visisted, and very big they are. This was the mosque for the workers to use during the day.

We got very nice hospitality at our meetings.

There was also this:

The yellow cake was labelled “lamington”. I refuse to accept that anything yellow can be properly described as a lamington.

This was the only fizzy caffeinated beverage equivalent I came across. Except, it wasn’t that fizzy. Also, they didn’t refill it in my mini bar fridge, and I didn’t get a chance to visit anywhere which might sell such beverages, so I had to go without my crutch for the week. Probably was compensated for by the usually large amount of tea I found myself drinking.

The Education folk from the Embassy took us out to a lovely Indonesian style dinner on Wednesday and I tried out a Java Mojito and ate a lot of chilli.

While our government-to-government meetingswent well and were productive, I enjoyed most talking to the training providers, who were all closely involved in manufacturing. We were actually very impressed by the training they were doing. And I lvoe the tours of their facilities.

These are the security guards outside the Australian Embassy. We had a number of security restrictions on us – we could only use certain taxis and on May Day, while we were meeting elsewhere, the Embassy was locked down due to a huge protest.

We managed a little time for shopping and I bought a compulsory complement of batik shirts for my menfolk.

Our last night was spent out at Bandung where one of the Polyteknik’s we were visiting was. Room and the view from it pictured above.

This is me after too many hours in the car – I was getting bored enough to take selfies.

And here is a picture from our road trip Starbucks stop – coffee after prayers.

We flew home Friday night, and when I got home on Saturday, while there were no boys, I was very pleased to find the other things I had missed most for the week – fizzy caffeinated beverages and bacon – in the fridge.

We were all off to the roller derby Saturday night – Black and Blue Bells versus The Surly Griffins. They got into the May the Fourth theme with their roll out.

Sadly, the Bells ended up comprehensively defeating the Griffins, but there was so good moment of play, and some outstanding juking from Penergy.

I slept in the next day and then hung out with Jude and Zac until it was derby training time. Meanwhile James had taken Sebastian up to Campbelltown for a regional hockey carnival, where Sebastian scored 3 goals and his team won the grand final for the day!